A Guide to Telephone Answering Services

Are you considering launching a new business and you think you will be needing the services of telephone receptionists pretty soon?

We have continued down the technology development road for quite a while now, and we have systems for just about everything.

The telephone, for example, is an essential business communication platform and there are many ways to receive a call today, ranging from an automated reply to a professional telephone receptionist, and despite the emergence of the Internet, the telephone is still the most favoured way to do business.

Here are just a few of the phone answering systems available today.

The Answering Machine

These arrived on the scene half a century ago and were popular in the 80s and 90s, as that famous “please leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you” was played on millions of phone lines around the world.

You can walk into a store and purchase a machine, which hooks up to a power outlet and your phone line and will play your recorded message.

For the ultimate in telephone answering, you can buy recordings by famous people or come up with your own funny content, but for modern business, this is most certainly not the best approach. People expect a lot more than an automated voice response so the answering machine is primarily used in domestic environments.

Virtual Telephone Receptionist

This is the best it gets, with a qualified and experienced virtual telephone receptionist handling all incoming calls, she is fully briefed on the client’s business and would carry out the task from a remote location – the headquarters of the service provider – and would take messages, forward calls and give out product information.

Many businesses take advantage of virtual reception services, as it is an affordable way to have professional call handling. There are many virtual telephone receptionists answering serviceproviders and they have both the resources and know how to offer a wide range of business communication solutions at an affordable cost to the client, and what’s more, they can handle any number of calls.

Live Telephone Receptionist

Most large companies will have a number of directly employed telephone receptionists and they have the volume of calls to justify the expense – which is considerable – yet many such companies have made the switch to virtual receptionist services as it costs a fraction of hiring staff.

People want human contact and the phone is a very important avenue of business for any company, and by directly employing a qualified receptionist, you can be sure that all incoming calls will be professionally handled.

Digital technology has provided the perfect business communication platform and with VoIP, you can create networks and people can video conference wherever they are in the world.

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